Whitney Tilson's School Reform Blog

Tuesday, May 02, 2017

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With Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration pushing school choice, I’d like to take a look at the debate. First, here are two NYT articles that are quite damning, followed by responses by my friend John Kirtley, a key player in Florida’s choice program, Matthew Ladner, Elizabeth Warren (from her 2003 book), Paul DiPerna in EducationNext, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of NY.

Here’s the first NYT article:

Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins

The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education was a signal moment for the school choice movement. For the first time, the nation’s highest education official is someone fully committed to making school vouchers and other market-oriented policies the centerpiece of education reform.

But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.

…This is very unusual. When people try to improve education, sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. The successes usually register as modest improvements, while the failures generally have no effect at all. It’s rare to see efforts to improve test scores having the opposite result. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, calls the negative effects in Louisiana “as large as any I’ve seen in the literature” — not just compared with other voucher studies, but in the history of American education research.

And here’s the second:

DeVos and Tax Credit Vouchers: Arizona Shows What Can Go Wrong

Steve Yarbrough is one of the most powerful men in Arizona. As president of the State Senate, he has promoted a range of conservative policies, including a tuition tax credit system that provides over $100 million per year to finance vouchers for private schools.

In his speech to Congress this week, President Trump singled out a young woman who attended private school using a tax credit-financed voucher. The president urged Congress to pass legislation that would provide similar benefits to millions of students.

But Mr. Yarbrough is not just a champion of tax credit vouchers. He also profits from them personally. The story of how that happened raises questions about President Trump’s campaign promise to spend $20 billion to increase school choice. There’s a strong chance that he’ll do that through tax credit vouchers — a mechanism that Betsy DeVos actively campaigned for before she became Mr. Trump’s education secretary.

…But the shell-game process of moving money from the public treasury to a donor to a nonprofit to a family to a private school makes it very difficult to account for how well those public dollars are ultimately spent.

Tax credit voucher policies vary among states, but most impose few requirements on the private schools that receive them. By contrast, many of the largest new direct voucher programs, where funds go straight from the government to the school, require private schools to administer the same tests given to students in public schools. That’s how researchers were able to determine that vouchers in some states are driving down student test scores to an unprecedented degree.

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John Kirtley's defense of vouchers

Here’s John Kirtley’s response:

Whitney,

First of all, I really appreciate the chance to respond. I have always valued your forum for its open exchange of ideas.

Let me address the NYT article on the research. There have been numerous columns in the Times and other media outlets attempting to discredit the empirical outcomes on private school choice. I would love for your readers to know the fuller picture. Read the facts about credible research on private school choice here:http://www.federationforchildren.org/setting-record-straight-school-choice/

The bottom line: There have been 15 gold standard empirical studies of private school choice programs that measure test score outcomes: 10 show improvement, 3 are neutral, and 2 are negative—and those two are only based upon results in early years of those programs.

Another thing to consider: the Louisiana program was designed in such a way that many higher quality schools might have been scared off from taking children, even though they had been inclined to. There is absolutely a need for academic and fiscal accountability in private school choice programs; however, the measures cannot be so onerous as to discourage high quality schools from participating. Charter schools encounter the same issues in Florida--some operators say that they are discouraged from serving low income children because they aren't given enough time to turn around the kids before being shut down by districts. Even the fantastic KIPP school in Jacksonville needed time to turn around their kids.

Regarding the NYT article on the Arizona scholarship organization: this piece shows how the design of tax credit scholarship laws is critical--just as it is with charter school laws. In my opinion and experience, a well-designed tax credit law will have the following characteristics:

* Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs), the non-profits that are allowed to receive tax credited funds, must be subject to strict fiscal accountability. Under Florida's law, SGOs must submit a clean audit every year by a legitimate third party CPA firm (we use McGladrey). SGOs are also audited by the state Auditor General every year. Officers and directors must undergo a background check and not have a business bankruptcy in the past seven years. Administrative funds are limited to three percent of the tax credited funds raised. Step Up For Students, the SGO that serves 99% of 100,000 children on the Florida program, was named by Charity Navigator as the third highest ranking charity in the country for fiscal accountability, governance, and transparency.

* SGOs should not be able to serve a single school or subset of schools, and the should not be able to discriminate on the basis of religion. Under Florida's law, SGOs must award scholarships on a first come, first served basis after returning children. Parents may choose any qualified private school in the state, and the scholarships are portable to a different school if the first one doesn't work out. These measures ensure that a tax credit program is a true parental choice program, not a private school subsidy program.

* Students must be given either the state assessment, or a nationally recognized norm referenced test, whichever the private school prefers. Private schools were already giving tests before our scholarship was created--the market demands it. Test scores must be reported to a research entity chosen by the state, and the results of the scholarship children must be made public (obviously subject to privacy laws). We have to know how the scholarship children are doing in order to justify the program to parents, policy makers and taxpayers.

* Under Florida's law, private schools that take more than $250,000 worth of scholarship children must annually have a third party CPA look at their books and issue a report stating that the school is using the money for educational purposes. Any participating school must also provide evidence that their employees that deal with children have undergone background checks--something the private schools were already doing.

With the right design and accountability, tax credit scholarship laws can be a vital tool in our fight to improve outcomes for low income children. The average annual income of the children on Florida's program is $24,000 for a household of four; over 70% are minorities. They attend over 1,700 private schools of their parents' choice around the state. The scholarship has become just one of the many choice programs that parents choose in our state: we have magnets, charters, virtual schooling and dual enrollment with higher education. We have voucher programs for special needs children. But there are some children--especially low income children--that will only thrive in the environment that a private or even faith based school can provide. In Florida today, over 30% of the K12 children funded by the taxpayers do not attend their zoned school--and in the Miami Dade district it's over seventy percent! Why should we restrict the choices of poor parents?

It pains me so to see the choice movement splinter as it seems to be doing. Charter advocates should not oppose private school choice, and vice versa. How does it make sense to have a high performing charter school in NYC take over a building that was a Catholic school with a 99% graduation rate? As important, the political battles we must fight are much better fought together, as allies. Nothing makes the teacher union happier than to see the choice movement fight amongst itself.

I am not a private school advocate. I am a choice advocate. I am agnostic as to what kind of school a parent chooses. But I believe low income parents should be empowered to choose the best environment for their children, regardless of who runs it. The battle to empower parents has to be continually fought. The charter movement should never think (and I doubt it does) that the union will ever rest. Just two and a half years ago the Florida teachers union filed a lawsuit asking the courts to shut down the tax credit scholarship program and evict its 100,000 children from their schools. I beg your readers to watch this 60 second commercial BAEO aired about the suit, which shows over 10,000 parents and children--mostly minorities--who came to the distant state Capitol to march against the union: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ZdN4jLhKE&feature=youtu.be

Within a month of the suit being filed, we had a formal coalition of over 100 of the state's most prominent African American ministers and over 100 Hispanic ministers denouncing the suit.

Whitney, thanks again for the opportunity to address your readers. I really appreciate it.

I asked John: “Do you have any opinion on whether voucher/tax credit programs should be limited to low-income families and/or students trapped in failing schools, so it's not just a government handout to wealthier families (especially those who seek white and/or religious schools)?”

Here was his reply:

Yes, I have very strong personal opinions on that.

I got into the parental choice movement twenty years ago to help parents who do not have enough money to move to a neighborhood where the zoned school met their children's needs, or could not pay for an alternative. I don't worry about those fortunate parents who have the ability to do that already. So I fight for low income and middle class parents who can't make a choice. I would add that most private school choice laws are means tested, whereas I don't believe I've ever seen a charter law that is.

I strongly object to any law that restricts scholarships to children in "failing" public schools, for two reasons:

1) It's just too easy for these laws to end up not helping enough kids. In Florida, Governor Bush's A+ Plan (enacted in 1999) had a voucher program for children in "failing" public schools. A public school had to get two "F" grades in a four year period for the children to be eligible. In the first year of grading there were only 78 " F" schools in the state. This was out of over 3,000 public schools, when the graduation rate for black children was less than 50%. The next year? There were no schools in the state that received an "F". That doesn't mean the law was a failure; in fact, the mere threat of the voucher made many schools improve (there have been excellent studies on this). But that program never served more than a thousand children in a state with over two million public school children. It shows you how hard it is to make a choice program based on " failing" schools work. Again I would ask you--where is there a charter law where the children have to attend a failing public school to get in?

2) I don't believe that eligibility should be based on the overall performance of a school. You could have a child zoned to a high performing school, and it's just a terrible fit for them. Conversely, you could have a "failing" public school (by some formula), and it works great for some kids. In the early 2000's Northwestern High School in Miami was graded an "F" every year. But every year they sent kids to the Ivy League on scholarship. It sure wasn't a failure for those kids.

The bottom line is that in my opinion eligibility should be based on income. But I don't want to see the middle class left out. What if your'e a cop and a nurse with two kids in New York City? Should their family not be eligible?

I would ask you this question: why doesn't the charter movement demand that eligibility for charter schools be means tested or limited to children attending "failing" schools?

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When presented with this type of information, the first instinct of some will be to deny it, to hunker down, to accuse our enemies of far greater misdeeds, or to otherwise try to put lipstick on a pig. Good luck with that. It is blindingly obvious to me that Arizona’s tax credit is system is a good program overall that suffers from specific weaknesses that can and must be addressed. Otherwise, writing articles like this one will become the journalistic equivalent of using a shot-gun to shoot fish in a bucket.

Since then, things have improved substantially, but Kevin did not get the memo. Here are a few items that Kevin left out:

Subsequent to 2009, the state enacted new legislation to require STOs to both consider financial need in the granting of scholarships, and to report to the Arizona Department of Revenue on the family income of recipients. When you examine the Arizona Department of Revenue Reports, you find that approximately 80 to 90 scholarship funds went to middle and low-income students. This not only is a more progressive distribution than many public schools and school districts, it beats the living daylights out of another Arizona tax credit for public school kids that overwhelmingly goes to advantaged public schools. Quite frankly it is likely that a large majority of private choice funds were going to middle and low-income children before the state required reporting. It’s just nice to have an Arizona Department of Revenue report that confirms it.

Carey wrote “Some states, like Alabama and Indiana, limit tax credit vouchers to low- and middle-income families, or to students who were previously enrolled in public school. But others, including Arizona, do not, subsidizing private education for the well-off.” Two of Arizona’s credits are means tested, and two are not. One of the two that is not means tested exclusively serves children with disabilities. I’ll be for completely means-testing private choice programs the very instant that Kevin gets means-testing passed for district schools. Until such time, let’s note for the record that the Arizona private tax credit programs serve provide far fewer dollars to “well off” kids than say, Scottsdale Unified. Someone please wake me up when the Times runs a breathless expose about rich kids getting exclusive access to fancy and abundantly funded public schools.

Reasonable people can disagree about the degree and extent of oversight and other devilish details in a program like this. Even we in the Wild West have to make adjustments on occasion, and the democratic process is ultimately pretty good at hashing these sort of things out. I’ll be happy to make my donation this April to help a low-income parent choose a school for their child.

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From “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke” (2003) by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. Ms. Warren is now a U.S. senator from Massachusetts:

Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home just because it happens to lie within the boundaries of a desirable school district.

A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly. A taxpayer-funded voucher that paid the entire cost of educating a child (not just a partial subsidy) would open a range of opportunities to all children. . . . Fully funded vouchers would relieve parents from the terrible choice of leaving their kids in lousy schools or bankrupting themselves to escape those schools.

We recognize that the term “voucher” has become a dirty word in many educational circles. The reason is straightforward: The current debate over vouchers is framed as a public-versus-private rift, with vouchers denounced for draining off much-needed funds from public schools. The fear is that partial-subsidy vouchers provide a boost so that better-off parents can opt out of a failing public school system, while the other children are left behind.

But the public-versus-private competition misses the central point. The problem is not vouchers; the problem is parental choice. Under current voucher schemes, children who do not use the vouchers are still assigned to public schools based on their zip codes. This means that in the overwhelming majority of cases, a bureaucrat picks the child’s school, not a parent. The only way for parents to exercise any choice is to buy a different home—which is exactly how the bidding wars started.

Short of buying a new home, parents currently have only one way to escape a failing public school: Send the kids to private school. But there is another alternative, one that would keep much-needed tax dollars inside the public school system while still reaping the advantages offered by a voucher program. Local governments could enact meaningful reform by enabling parents to choose from among all the public schools in a locale, with no presumptive assignment based on neighborhood. Under a public school voucher program, parents, not bureaucrats, would have the power to pick schools for their children—and to choose which schools would get their children’s vouchers.

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Broad perspective and context are essential. Negative initial findings in one or two locations, based solely on one performance metric, should not halt the creation or expansion of school choice programs in other parts of the country. Generalizing those findings across states is problematic because education is sensitive to state and local cultural, political, governmental and economic conditions. The many places where we have observed significant positive results from choice programs swamp the few where we have seen negative findings. We need to consider the complete research base and not disproportionately emphasize the most recent studies.

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While addressing Congress last week, President Trump called for passage of “an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth.” He added that families should be able to choose “public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home” schooling. These comments, and his subsequent visit to St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando, Fla., are encouraging. I hope Mr. Trump will push Congress to makes scholarship tax credits available to working-class families nationwide.

These programs provide tax credits for individuals or corporations that donate to nonprofit scholarship organizations. St. Andrew’s is a classic example of how students benefit. Some 300 students at the school receive scholarships through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program. Statewide, nearly 98,000 low-income children attend parochial or private schools thanks to this program.

I have seen firsthand why Catholic families and leaders support scholarship tax credits. They help advance educational and economic justice. They strengthen society by creating opportunity for those who might not otherwise have it. Recipients of the credits aren’t the only ones who benefit. Last year the Peabody Journal of Education reviewed 21 studies on how school choice affects test scores of nonparticipating students. Twenty concluded that competition led to improvements in affected public schools.

The taxpayer also saves money. Providing alternatives reduces both school overcrowding and costs. Public-school classrooms would not be able to handle the considerable influx of children if Catholic and other religious schools closed. We save the public money, and we educate children just as well, if not better, for half the cost when you compare Catholic school tuition with public school spending per pupil.

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